How to Silence Negative Self-Talk and Find the Confidence to Trust Yourself

Posted on November 17, 2022 by Selika Cerofolini, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

By learning to trust myself and listen to the right voice, I was able to:

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Boost my coaching practice
Help the people I work with more effectively
Have better relationships with friends, family, life at large, and—most importantly — with myself.
Imagine a seed planted in hard, dry soil. And now the same seed is planted in fertile terrain, humid and nutritious. The seeds are the experiences and learnings we encounter through life and the terrain is us, how we prepare the soil to receive them. The difference in the earth’s humidity is our degree of self-love, and conjointly the kind of inner dialogue we have going on in our minds.

Imagine now hail or a storm hitting the two different landscapes. The desertic, dry one will immediately crack. The other will absorb the hurt. Its softness will help integrate the difficult weather conditions, and shortly after return to its balanced state. The hail is the challenges and hurt we all encounter in life, and once again how we receive them, and the terrain we prepared, sets the stage for our future circumstances.

You can achieve driven by the criticism stemming from anger, fear, or shame, but you’ll grow into a thorny plant. Armored, resistant to water, and tough. These plants have their beauty, they can grow in hostile conditions but are often prone to pride and isolation. Furthermore, in this case, the difference is that it’s us choosing to give those seeds a desert, while it’s in our power to nurture a lush jungle.

Shifting from the voice of fear, anger, or shame to the voice of wisdom and love is not a one-night affair. It’s a practice. It’s making that desert become a jungle. To do that, you don’t just throw a torrent of water at it.

If you do that, the water goes through the cracks and nothing changes: As soon as the deluge has passed, the ground dries up and it’s a desert again. When I say this, I think about all those self-affirmations or empty behaviors that we — in our deepest hearts — don’t believe. They wet the surface and evaporate when the first ray of sun shines.

My plants taught me so: You have to give them water, consistently, just the right amount the earth can take at any given moment. If their soil is dry you have to moist it a little at the beginning, wait, then some more. The wet soil will be able to absorb and retain a little more water, and a little more, and so on. Until it becomes bountiful and that’s its new nature.

Give yourself what you can take, in a way that feels true to you. But you do have to start giving it water at some point. And how to do that?

I will share what helped me and the people I work with through this journey, which I am still walking.

Talk to yourself like you would talk to a person you love a lot
We are mostly unaware of our negative self-talk and the ways we sabotage ourselves and our inner trust over and over. One practice that helped me and many of the people I accompany is to think about a person we love dearly. It could be your best friend, your brother, or your child…anyone you feel a sort of unconditional love for.

Notice how you talk to them or imagine yourself in that situation. Observe the level of compassion, understanding, and perspective you offer.

Now think about the last time you talked to yourself, or just pay attention the next time you do it. Which words are you using? Which tone? What’s the level of compassion and understanding you have there?

It can be useful to have a notebook and keep two columns where you write how you talk to your beloved and how you talk to yourself. The stark difference between the two conversations is often eye-opening.

Why this difference in treatment?

Negative Self-talk is a habit we cultivate since childhood, which has served us to some extent. Children internalize all the explicit and implicit messages they receive from their environment, especially from significant people in their lives, and growing up we keep that voice as a guide to let us know what the right way is to be in this world (because that’s what we learned through our perception as kids). This unconscious mechanism becomes second nature and we don’t even notice it anymore.

But the truth is that we can shift it, as with all habits. As adults, we have the power to do so.

If you want to do that, try these steps:

1. Pay attention to that voice when it shows up. Raise your awareness.

2. Acknowledge the “negative” thoughts. Let them know that you hear their concern. Tell them “I hear you”. They do have a message for you, they want you to do well, and they want to protect you, but their strategy is not beneficial, especially in the long term.

3. Question them: Do you need that message? How is that way to express it helping you? Is it even true?

4. Choose not to believe it. Or just accept the useful part. If it says “You idiot made a mistake in the report!” — You can take “You made a mistake. It happens. Next time try to avoid distractions and double-check”. Do you hear the contrast? It’s the difference between judgment and discernment. You can say “No, Thank you” to the first and listen to the second.

5. Own the fact that you always have a choice. Those critical voices are voices of the past, so they very often tell us things that do not apply to the present and who we are anymore, and need to be let go of entirely.

There are different approaches to inner voices. I believe in befriending them and not treating them as an enemy. Saying “No, Thank you” has proven much more effective than saying “F*** You!” in my experience.

First of all, because with the enemy attitude we are still engaged in a fight with ourselves. We remain stuck in a climate of inner conflict and separation. While we are the happiest in harmony and integration.

Secondly, these voices are part of us and are here to stay. Understanding that they were born with good intentions, to make us better people, humanizes them and therefore softens us up.

Understanding doesn’t mean agreeing or giving in. It means to develop compassion and loving-kindness toward ourselves — being those voices part of us. The compassion we develop towards them will return to us tenfold and will tune their volume down significantly.

In my experience, being at war with yourself — whatever you are fighting against, leaves everyone losing on the battlefield.

Contradictory as it seems, we can welcome in AND say “no” at the same time.

Leverage the body to connect to the voice of Wisdom
Even if it’s to our disadvantage, we may hold onto those critical voices because that’s the only thing we know how to do. So, as we let those go, we need to shift our attention to another voice for guidance, probably less familiar and which we tend to not believe, ironically, as it’s the voice of Truth: our inner Wisdom.

When you hear the critical voice incessantly talking at you in your head, find a place in your body that feels safe, and relaxed. For some could be the heart, for others the belly, or some other place. I mentioned those areas because physiologically, making contact there has a soothing effect on the nervous system.

Keep a hand in that grounded place and feel the warmth irradiating through your palm. Tune into that communication. As you do that you are shifting your awareness from the mind (where the unproductive thoughts live) to your body which sits in the present moment if it’s not conditioned by those thoughts.

Feel your feet on the ground, and the solidity of your body. Take your time, breathe and notice how you feel in that relationship. Connect with these sensations and ground yourself IN yourself. Chances are you may make contact with a deeper inner voice.

You’ll recognize it because the voice of wisdom is never rushed, never scary. It doesn’t judge, it discerns. It’s not critical and doesn’t put you down. It’s always encouraging and doesn’t worry. Because she knows better: She knows the imperfect human nature and she’s full of compassion for our flawed way of being.

On the contrary, the voice of fear, anxiety, anger, or shame is loud, scary, and agitated. It brings you down and hits you hard. It has a sense of urgency and that feeling of a life or death issue. It’s totalizing and overwhelming and transforms considerations on behavior or event into a judgment on you as a person. It drives you through anxiety and a sense of lack and unworthiness. It may help you climb the ladder but it will make you more fragile, burned out, or unstable on your way to your goals.

Wisdom will guide you to achievement while increasing your confidence and resilience, always forgiving and always encouraging, never expecting but aware of your gifts. It’s the voice of your true nature and it’s calm, controlled, and certain. It knows everything is going to be just fine.

You just need to check in on how you are feeling in your body to know who’s speaking. And then choose who to listen to. So,

P A U S E.

STOP.

BREATHE.

This is not overnight delivery. It takes practice. And practice means discipline, consistency, and repetition. The process is the same, but its meaning and impact deepen each time you engage with it.

You are building a new awareness, a new consciousness, and new neuronal paths of automatic responses to events. It may feel unfamiliar at the beginning but often gives immediate relief. You will feel better about yourself, energized, not depleted or discouraged.

This is what I learned from my teachers, what I am practicing and what has changed my life. Still, I occasionally and regularly abandon myself to self-doubt and shameful self-talk (that’s my go-to). It’s normal. But the more I practice the less it lasts.

My body lets me know when I drift away from a balanced, truthful state and I am there to listen. When I misalign I feel restless, nervous, intolerant, tense, and itchy. Those are my red flags, the signs my ego is driving the boat and I have to reconnect with my wisdom.

Then I know I need to stop. And rest, and breathe. I slow down, as much as needed, for how long is needed, to realign. This is not about always being in balance, but going off balance and back in. Quicker and quicker.

The off-balance states are big learning moments to take advantage of. Huge growth to be celebrated. They smell like sh**, but they’re gold. Remembering this helps me snap out of my self-deprecation and victimhood.

This is my experience. As you get into it, you will find yours. Maybe you’ll share it with me. What did you discover? What are your red flags? And how do you react to them?

Good luck on this journey if you decide to embark on it.